Donald Trump is eyeing a pot of $13.9 billion in funding designated for disaster relief in order to pay for his precious border wall. NBC News writes:

The money was set aside to fund projects all over the country including storm-damaged areas of Puerto Rico through fiscal year 2020, but the checks have not been written yet and, under an emergency declaration, the president could take the money from these civil works projects and use it to build the border wall, said officials familiar with the briefing and two congressional sources. […]

Under the proposal, the officials said, Trump could dip into the $2.4 billion allocated to projects in California, including flood prevention and protection projects along the Yuba River Basin and the Folsom Dam, as well as the $2.5 billion set aside for reconstruction projects in Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria.

Unbelievable. The money hasn’t been spent yet, so Trump is just going to raid funding that was intended to help the recovery of areas that have been ripped apart by natural disasters and mitigate the impact of future ones. Goodness knows the idea of screwing over California probably makes Trump giddy, and he’s already provided paper-towel relief to Puerto Rico, so they’re good.

Trump has reportedly told the Army Corps of Engineers to start preparing to assign out the contractual work of building the wall and assess whether work could begin on the wall within 45 days. And since Trump would supposedly be able to access more than the $5.7 billion he was hoping to get from Congress, he’s anticipating building 315 miles of his steel slat thingy rather than just 234 miles of it.

This is what happens when you put a narcissistic mad man with zero management skills or empathy in charge of a giant apparatus with too unchecked power.